


Even Wikipedia Can't Answer This

by firstbreaths



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, five times fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-06
Updated: 2014-02-06
Packaged: 2018-01-11 10:51:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1172183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstbreaths/pseuds/firstbreaths
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times someone thought Stiles and Scott were dating... and the one time they actually were.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Even Wikipedia Can't Answer This

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stilessexual](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stilessexual/gifts).



> A huge thank you to missgoalie75 for cheerleading and betaing, as always!

1\. Melissa

Screw pop psychology, Stiles and Scott have been friends for such a long time _because_ they tell each other everything. About misunderstood homework assignments and wet dreams; _how do you tell your best friend you’re a werewolf_ isn’t such a big deal given that Stiles was always going to be supportive in the long run.

The one thing they don’t really talk about is the fact that everyone thinks they’re dating… each other.

They’re at Scott’s house after school, dumping their bags in the hallway and running upstairs because they might possibly have a lead, when Scott’s mom steps out from the bathroom and stands in front of them, arms crossed in front of her chest. She’s still in her scrubs and her hair is escaping from her ponytail; Stiles suspects that she dashed home in time to meet them. If he asked, there’s probably a box of cookies on the table and milk in the fridge.

“I’m not even going to ask what you two are up to,” she says, “because I _know_ it’s not homework.”

(Stiles would almost rather be doing homework, if what they suspect just so happens to be true.) 

“What would you say if we actually were going to be doing homework?” Scott replies, with a grin, “As much as I’m sure you love attending my parent-teacher interviews, I would like to graduate at some point and go to college.”

“Yeah,” Stiles adds, before Melissa can say anything, “Thinking about the future’s important to us, even if it doesn’t always seem that way.” He nudges Scott, letting his eyes drift to Scott’s bedroom door, because they _really_ need to get going, partly because this could be life or death for whoever in this town inevitably stumbles across a supernatural creature or three during a late night quickie in the woods, and partly because he’d kind of like to get home and have dinner with his dad before he leaves for night shift at the station.

Scott takes a step towards his room, apparently getting what Stiles is thinking, when Scott’s mom takes a step back of her own, hand waving back and forth between them. “Oh,” she says, eyes wide, “okay, I was expecting video games or something, not ... this.” And she waves a hand back and forth between them again.

It takes a moment for Stiles to get it, but when it clicks he blushes right to his roots. This is Scott’s mom, whom he might have had a crush on for five minutes when he was thirteen, and who has always been there to allow sleepovers and find bandaids after the inevitable accents at said sleepovers. Also, he’s not dating Scott McCall.

“Well you know things are awkward when you’d rather we be playing video games,” Stiles quips, very deliberately not looking at Scott. They’ll talk about it later, but not while his mother’s within earshot.

Melissa’s expression softens, though, and this time when she glances between Scott and Stiles there’s a certain fondness that almost makes Stiles feel guilty, like he hasn’t been trying hard enough to protect her son, even though it’s hard to protect someone from something you don’t actually recognise or know even exists, yet. Still.

“I just want you guys to know that I’m here, if you want to talk,” she says, “and if you want, I can probably get some pamphlets about this kind of stuff from the clinic, if it helps you figure out how to talk about it.”

It’s Scott's turn to blush now, gritting a ‘Mom, we’re not dating’ through clenched teeth. Stiles doesn’t know if Melissa believes him though, because she just smiles and walks back downstairs, leaving Scott and Stiles to burst into Scott’s room, dumping their bags on the floor and going straight to Scott’s computer, the door slamming shut behind them.

(Because that’s not going to _totally_ confirm her suspicions.)

“Five more minutes, and then I’m going to come upstairs and be as nosy as I suspect most mothers actually are,” Scott’s mom calls from downstairs, and Stiles can hear the springs of their old couch squeak as she settles into it, a sudden burst of noise coming from the TV. He can almost imagine her faint smile, picture her rolling her eyes at the two of them, and he ignores it.

Besides, Stiles thinks, resting his chin on the back of Scott’s chair as Scott clicks on yet another Google link, there are worse possibilities in the world than him dating Melissa McCall’s son, even if they’re not actually dating.

Like - and both he and Scott jump backwards as the page Scott clicked on finally loads, revealing some kind of _creature_ with glowing eyes - him helping Melissa McCall’s son stay alive in the face of several deadly supernatural creatures.

(Besides, that night, when they’re trampling through the forest to hunt down said supernatural creatures, Scott catches him when he almost impales himself on a tree, his hands steady and warm against Stiles’ waist, and says, “just so you know, if we _were_ dating, my mom totally would have made you stay for dinner.”)

* * *

2\. Lydia

It’s a couple of weeks later when Lydia, of all people, starts getting suspicious, and Stiles kind of wants to sink through the floor.

(He won’t. There’s nothing embarrassing about being gay, and besides if there’s one benefit to being best friends with a werewolf, it’s that you get really good really quickly at looking all sorts of dangerous emotions in the face. Scott’s stopped transforming just to scare the shit out of him, after that one time that Stiles had what felt kind of like a heart attack, and Scott had made it up to him with ice cream and a sincere apology once he’d seen the look on Stiles’ face, but sometimes he can still see how scared of himself Scott is, underneath all the fur, and if Stiles kept that secret for so long he’s not about to get hung upon on this _not actually a secret._ )

“I just wanted to let you two know that, whatever _this_ is,” she waves a hand between them, and Stiles almost drops the book he’s just pulled out of his locker on his foot, “you can stop hiding it.”

“We’re not -” Stiles starts, looking to Scott for confirmation, but Scott’s just staring at Allison, on Lydia’s other side.

That _should_ be confirmation enough, but Stiles elbows Scott harshly in the side anyway.

“We’re - right,” Scott says with a feeble cough. “Stiles is my best friend,” and –

Lydia might not believe it, but for now, that’s enough.

Sometimes Stiles wonders how they would have survived if he was the werewolf and their roles were reversed, if he was relying on Scott to save him. They’d probably still be here; maybe not in this exact position, because they’d probably have made a lot more progress (and have a few less scars) if Scott was driving the Jeep instead of him, but whatever. They’re a team.

A pretty poor team, apparently, judging by the way Lydia crosses her arms, but again - whatever.

The next day, Lydia slides a manila folder across the table, the sides bursting with how much paper is stuffed in there. “Here,” she says, pushing it in his direction, and Stiles opens it gingerly, the front of her folder pinched between his thumb and index finger, because the last thing he wants is Lydia Martin, the girl he’s had a crush on since the third grade, giving him information about how to deal with being gay.

Stiles pulls out the top page, prepared to give her a carefully rehearsed speech about how just because two guys occasionally save each others lives it doesn’t mean anything (has she ever seen any superhero movie ever?), when his jaw drops, because -

The folder is full of photocopies of a book of Asian mythology he’d been admiring last time he was at her house, complete with translations from their original languages in bright purple pen. Stiles doesn’t say anything, just nods at her across the table, and she flips her hair back across her shoulder and says simply, “You and Scott are going to get killed if you keep relying so much on Wikipedia.”

It’s not until he gets home that Stiles discovers a myth about two men who had a bond thicker than blood or rope, and he can almost see the _told you so_ implicit in the sharp curve of Lydia’s letters, the thick dots at the end of her sentences and the bottom of her exclamation points.

She’s smarter than even she’d given herself credit for, Stiles thinks, even though he’s totally _not_ in love with Scott (and none of these myths say anything about what to do if he was, or about denial. The fact that denial’s not just a river in Egypt doesn’t quite cut it here).

They just so happen to make a really good team, what with Stiles’ brains and wit and Scott’s compassion and werewolf-induced physical abilities. And Stiles will take being assumed to be gay if it means they can get on with saving Beacon Hills – and maybe, possibly, preferably when there’s a documentary crew around, the world. 

(He taps out a text to Scott to ask if matching superhero costumes would be a little too much.

Scott texts back a moment later, obviously avoiding his homework: _do you even know how to sew?)_

* * *

 

3\. Coach Finstock

Yeah, Finstock just seems to think that everyone’s gay. There’s probably a proverb along the lines of _he who doth protest too much_ that Stiles can relate to that, but then again, they _do_ end up in a lot of compromising positions in the locker room, so Stiles can’t blame the guy, really. For a bunch of _lacrosse_ players, there’s a lot of sexual aggression among the guys in the team.

Although it would be nice if practice occasionally finished early so that Stiles could spend more time dealing with the various supernatural related causes leading to discussions that lead to awkward locker room moments with Scott. And you know, finish his homework and spend time with his other friends.

* * *

4\. Stiles

He goes home though, after one of those awkward locker room moments with Scott, though, and he can’t stop thinking about it.

Stiles doesn’t know what a sexuality crisis is supposed to feel like, but half an hour of lying on his bed with his face buried in the pillow later, he supposes that’s kind of the point, really; if he knew what was going on it wouldn’t be a _crisis._

So Stiles does what he does best. Freaks out.

And then starts to research.

He gives up on Wikipedia pretty quickly, after making a mental note to work on editing some of the articles, because he’s pretty sure that’s not what‘erotic plasticity’ actually means, and then he remembers the email Lydia had sent last time she’d thought he and Scott were dating, with the two attached zip folders including various alphabetised resources she’d procured. (Yeah. The mythology book had been sweet – and also slightly more appropriate to give him at a lunch table where other people were also sitting).

He doesn’t learn much from those articles either, except for a bunch of new scientific terms he just wishes he could use in his college applications (and really, wouldn’t ‘discovered I was gay whilst fighting supernatural creatures’ make a great personal essay?). Normally, the first person he’d text or call about this kind of thing is Scott, who, despite not being much of a researcher himself always knows exactly what to say to help unknot the tangled mess that is his mind, some days (it turns out that being the best friend of a werewolf comes with _almost_ as many emotional challenges as discovering one day that you can magically grow claws and sprout hair from your face), and really, how did he _not_ realise this sooner? And – are they awkwardly sort of dating already, and neither of them have mentioned it? Because, their relationship might not be sexual, but they share each other’s food, go on late night runs to Mickey Ds together, and he’s pretty sure that nine of the last ten calls in his call log are from Scott (the other’s from the station, his dad warning him to stay out of trouble, _again_ ).

There’s probably a cliché there about being intelligent in everything except love, and Stiles wonders, for a second, if this makes him Hermione Granger – given Scott’s mom’s complaints about how much teenage boys eat, he could _totally_ be Ron.

He rules out his dad, who would care, but they can’t have that conversation, not now (it’s a conversation he would have wanted to have with his mom, and Stiles _knows_ that would hang over it like a heavy cloud, right before it rains), and all of his friends as he scrolls through the contact list in his phone, before scrolling back up, taking a deep breath, and dialing Lydia.

He likes the irony of calling his former straight crush to talk about his new gay crush, even if he has to pull the phone away from his ear due to the loudness of her laugh, and makes plans to check out the new juice bar across town, as long as she can drive.

(Looking back, it’s been a long time since Scott criticised his ride, and Stiles isn’t sure if that’s a sign of his reciprocal attraction or just what happens when it’s both risked and saved your life a number of times. He doubts there’s a study that would help him draw any kind of conclusions about that one.)

“You could just ask, Scott, you know,” Lydia says once they get to the juice bar, not unkindly, smiling at him over her smoothie cup. She’d laughed for a good minute or two at his admission that he could somehow be dating Scott without even knowing it. “I read somewhere that people in love generally tend to talk to each other.”

“Yeah, well, just this once I’d like reading to _solve_ one of my problems instead of just creating more of them,” Stiles replies, throwing his hands up in the air, almost knocking over his own drink.

“Love is always going to be difficult,” Lydia sighs, and the funny thing is – it’s not the difficult part that scares him, because _what_ could be more difficult than realising that you maybe have a thing for your best friend who’s also a werewolf, and he and Scott have kind of got complicated down pat these days.

(They’d had a conversation once, admittedly whilst cowering under a desk in their freshman English classroom, where they’d both agreed that as much hiding out in the school on a Friday night kind of sucked, they wouldn’t give it up, because they could be – were – saving people’s lives in the process. And they were unlikely to get invited to most of the cooler kids’ parties anyway.) 

“Who said anything about love? Because _I_ read somewhere that you shouldn’t mention that particular word until after a certain number of dates that I’m pretty sure girls have a complicated mathematical formula to derive.”

“You really need to spend less time reading _Cosmo_.”

“Yeah, well,” Stiles sucks up the last of his juice through his straw. “I’m pretty sure they don’t include a quiz that helps you figure out who you’d rather spend the rest of your life with, a werewolf or a lizard.”

(For the record, he’d still date Scott even if he was a lizard, provided he wasn’t a murderous one.)

* * *

5\. Danny

Stiles and Scott aren’t accidentally sort of secretly dating, as it turns out.

The irony is that they discuss it whilst nursing beers at the local gay club, keeping an eye out for Danny as he tries to, once and for all, get over Ethan. Stiles takes a sip, deliberately not looking at the long line of Scott’s throat as he does the same.

After a moment though, he finds himself staring anyway, and maybe it’s the alcohol talking, or the fact that this is so far from where he saw his life before Scott just so happened to become a werewolf, but he decides to go for it.

“Scott, are we dating?”

“You mean, like –“ Scott blinks, his eyebrows raised. It’s way more endearing to Stiles than it should be. “If you want me to pay for the next round of drinks, you could just ask. My mom pays me good money to mow the lawn.”

“No,” Stiles mumbles, “I meant dating in a completely non-platonic, we spend more time together than you ever did with Allison, tell each other everything kind of way.”

“I don’t think so,” Scott says, thinking it over for a moment. Stiles watches him, feeling like his heart is somehow lodged in his throat, and he tries to swallow around it. “I think that’s probably something we’d have agreed on.”

“Yeah,” and Stiles laughs; it rings hollow. He wonders if Scott notices. “Don’t worry about it – just thinking about how many people seem to suspect that we’re dating.”

Scott is quiet for a moment, his gaze contemplative. “I mean, if we were dating, it would be nice not to have to second-guess everything – girls are complicated.”

“I don’t think you can say that’s limited to girls,” Stiles replies, laughing, because look at him, “but yeah. A relationship full of monster trucks and monstrous creatures, if we overlook the environmental destruction and potential death, what could be –”

“We’ve escaped death before,” Scott points out. “Multiple times.”

“Well, when you put it like that.”

Scott coughs, unwrapping his hands from his beer bottle and taking another drink. “We should probably –“

“Yeah,” and what he’s agreeing to, Stiles doesn’t know, but thankfully he’s distracted by Danny coming back over to him, leaving a guy or three blatantly staring behind him as he moves.

“You guys look like you’re having a serious conversation,” Danny says, sliding on to the stool beside Stiles, “No one’s had enough alcohol for that.”

“Just discussing the possibility of Scott and I falling in love, in some post-apocalyptic scenario that sounds scarily like Beacon Hills circa 2013”.

“Oh, you mean you weren’t already,” Danny says, and then shrugs, pulling a crumpled note out of his jeans pocket and slapping it down on the bar, waving the guy working behind it over. “What? Stiles stopped propositioning people in the locker room for sex. I just figured he was getting it from somewhere else.”

Stiles blinks once, twice, getting ready to defend himself, and then notices that Danny’s grinning at him, mouth wide and bright.

“Next round’s on me,” he says, reaching out and patting Stiles on the shoulder. “You guys can celebrate not giving into your hormones, or whatever.”

(It doesn’t stop Stiles from shifting a little closer to Scott, the more beers he drinks, but he figures it's okay – they’re best friends, they can talk about it in the morning when he’s sober and he’s not trying to fend off the occasional interested guy and everything will go back to normal again, right?

Right – and he laughs, because he’s apparently learnt nothing over the last year or two except how to fall in love with his best friend.)  

* * *

 

6\. and that one time they were actually dating

After all the time Stiles has spent analysing whether or not he and Scott are dating and why everyone else seems to think they’re dating and then struggling to deal with the consequences of all that over-analysing, it’s probably appropriate that Scott kisses him first, the two of them huddled up against a wall in the same locker room where so many people had suspected this of them.

“Please tell me you didn’t just kiss me because of all the adrenalin that comes from escaping monsters that look like they’d eat us… alive,” Stiles says afterwards, clutching at Scott’s shoulder. “Because, really, you should look into yoga or something for stress relief.”

Scott smiles, suddenly bashful, and it runs like a wire directly into Stiles’ skin, leaving his whole body flushed and tingling from more than just the constant running to escape.

(It’s funny, all that time they spend fleeing for their lives, and it’s never really felt like running away.)

“No,” Scott says, taking a deep breath, “although that might be part of it. I don’t really have much to go on, with Allison, it was just sort of –“ Scott shrugs. “I’m a werewolf, I’ve gotten pretty good at relying on instinct.”

“We’re like a real life version of _Romeo and Juliet,_ ” Stiles quips, “except, you know, a _lot_ more romantic because neither of us is planning on killing ourselves, and our parents actually get along.”

“You know I barely passed English last year,” Scott replies and, after a small moment of hesitation, slips his hand into Stiles’. His palm is clammy, and it makes Scott smile, because they’re both new to – and a little nervous (read also: fucking terrified) of all of this.

“Well, I’m here to teach you.”

“Good,” Scott replies, “because I’m here to listen.”

(Stiles will listen later, to a lot of things Scott says, to the beating of his heart, but for now they work together, figuring out the best way to tell everyone else. Both of them agree that they’ll leave informing Coach Finstock for last.)

 

 

 


End file.
